1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to apparatuses for capturing and storing real-time images, and in particular relates to apparatuses for capturing and storing real-time images without extra hardware costs.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the recent years, more and more electrical devices, such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA), personal computers or others, are being equipped with camera modules for capturing real-time pictures and video frames. The camera mounted in the electrical devices is a commonly used camera, which is operated on the general principle basis for operating cameras. Specifically, the camera for the electrical devices has an image capture device mounted therein. In the image capture device, there is an image sensor mounted for receiving light from an external light source to recognize the received light as an image.
In order to capture real-time image data sensed by the camera module without data lost, there are several synchronization control signals used for controlling the transmission of the sensed image data. FIG. 1 shows exemplary waveforms of the synchronization control signals. As shown in FIG. 1, the Data bus is responsible for carrying pixel data of frames. The synchronization control signal SVsync is responsible for indicating the beginning of a frame transmission (or the frame changes). The synchronization control signal SHref is responsible for indicating that the signal being carried on the Data bus is actual pixel data of a frame line. Typically, when the signal on the Data bus is actual pixel data, synchronization control signal SHref is pulled high. On the other hand, when the signal on the Data bus is blanking data, synchronization control signal SHref is pulled low. The synchronization control signal pixel clock SPixel—Clk is utilized to synchronize the pixel data transmissions. After detecting a start of a frame via the synchronization control signal SVsync, a receiver begins receiving pixel data of the frame. For example, the receiver captures pixel data on the data bus at the rising or falling edges of the pixel clock SPixel—Clk when the control signal SHref is at an active-high.